《在光与万物背后》选自马蒂亚斯·波利蒂基的《诗歌总集2017—1987》，诗人为中国读者精选出81首诗，按主题分为自然之诗、城市之诗、爱情之诗、生活之诗与远东之诗。波利蒂基在诗中分享了自己在三十年间对自然、城市、生活与爱情的诸多感受，也记录了在世界各地旅行过程中受到的启发。

在他看来，诗歌是寻求庇护、“将倾斜的世界重新归正”的方式，生活本身就是诗歌的源头。诗意，恰从生活的缝隙间透过。

World literature was long defined in North America as an established canon of European masterpieces, but an emerging global perspective has challenged both this European focus and the very category of "the masterpiece." The first book to look broadly at the contemporary scope and purposes of world literature, What Is World Literature? probes the uses and abuses of world literature in a rapidly changing world. In case studies ranging from the Sumerians to the Aztecs and from medieval mysticism to postmodern metafiction, David Damrosch looks at the ways works change as they move from national to global contexts. Presenting world literature not as a canon of texts but as a mode of circulation and of reading, Damrosch argues that world literature is work that gains in translation. When it is effectively presented, a work of world literature moves into an elliptical space created between the source and receiving cultures, shaped by both but circumscribed by neither alone. Established classics and new discoveries alike participate in this mode of circulation, but they can be seriously mishandled in the process. From the rediscovered Epic of Gilgamesh in the nineteenth century to Rigoberta Menchú's writing today, foreign works have often been distorted by the immediate needs of their own editors and translators. Eloquently written, argued largely by example, and replete with insightful close readings, this book is both an essay in definition and a series of cautionary tales.

《不合常规的飞翔》是《世界文学》短篇小说精选集，与另一本散文精选集《布拉格一瞥》一起构成了新世纪世界文学的短篇精品风貌。当前，在全世界，文学和阅读在文化领域中比重越来越小，但文学的生命力依然存在。《世界文学》编辑部的这两个集子，就试图为中国的读者提供一种风景。《不合常规的飞翔》从2000至2004年间《世界文学》杂志上发表的短篇小说中精选了最优秀最出色的作品，多姿多彩、好看得令人咋舌，堪称多样化与个性化的世界各国小说大餐。